Infighting among various Philadelphia politicians has given us a rare look at how the system really works. The incumbent District Attorney, Lynne Abraham, took a shot at her Republican opponent Jack McMahon, by releasing a training video McMahon made when he worked in the DA's office.
The video shows a training seminar for new young assistant DAs in which McMahon explains how to keep Black people off of juries in order to make the juries more pro-prosecution. This training seminar occurred after the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed this practice of knocking off jurors on the basis of race.
In the seminar, McMahon recommends challenging Blacks from low income areas because: "There's a resentment for law enforcement. There's a resentment for authority. And as a result, you don't want those people on your jury." He calls people from these neighborhoods "nitwits."
McMahon goes on to explain that you also don't want any Blacks who are educated, nor any older Black women when the defendant is a young Black man. But he says that a white teacher teaching in a Black school "that's sick of these guys" is probably OK.
Abraham, who is every bit as racist as McMahon, is now trying to claim the moral high ground, and sound all righteous about what McMahon said on the tape. "Morally, ethically and legally, I was bound to disclose the tape," Lynne told a press conference. To hear Lynne tell it, she just can't stand racism or to see someone railroaded by the DA's office.
This is the same Lynne Abraham who declared that Blacks commit 80% of all the crimes in Philadelphia. This is the same Lynne Abraham who is known as the "Queen of Death" for her advocacy of the death penalty, which is applied overwhelmingly to Blacks in Philadelphia. This is the same Lynne Abraham who is presiding over the biggest police and prosecutor scandal in Philadelphia's history. Over 300 convictions by Philadelphia courts have been overturned because of fraudulent evidence and frame-ups by police and prosecutors. Where was Lynne Abraham's great "sense of ethical duty" and outrage at injustice when her office was opposing every single motion to reveal the secret records from the DA's office in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal?
The technique of excluding Black jurors, detailed by McMahon in his training tape, is exactly what happened in Mumia's trial. The DA used preemptory challenges to strike 11 of 14 eligible Black jurors, while accepting the overwhelming majority of whites. Using this practice, the prosecution assembled a jury with nine whites, and Judge Sabo went on to replace one of only three Black jurors with yet another white juror.
In opposing Mumia's 1989 appeal which raised the this issue, the DA's office even used the exact arguments recommended by McMahon in his infamous tape as reasons why the Black jurors had been excluded.
In Mumia's 1995 hearing for a new trial, Lynne Abraham's office argued that the practice of challenging Black jurors was a thing of the past by the time of Mumia's 1982 trial. But now, with the McMahon tape, we have concrete evidence that the practice of excluding Black jurors continued and was taught to new assistant DAs well into the late 80s.
And who was the District Attorney in charge of the whole office when McMahon was conducting his little seminar? None other than Ron Castille, now a member of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, who sits in "impartial" judgment of Mumia's appeal.
SOURCES: New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and court papers.
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